As a mediocre frontend dev, this hits hard. I bought a bunch of texts to up my DS&A and college level math skills as I'd like to eventually be able to excecute on 3D animation in the browser, but the books end up sitting on my desk as I consider I'm too old/there're too many people who _do_ have these skills already, etc.
What sort of 3D animation do you want to do? If you're talking about shaders, you might be doing yourself a disservice with the bottom-up approach.
In my opinion, learning to use math functions as tools rather than having a deep understanding of how they work is an equally valid approach. I know several great WebGL developers who really aren't very good at math.
Consider the following definitions of the dot product:
A) Algebraically, the dot product is the sum of the products of the corresponding entries of the two sequences of numbers. Geometrically, it is the product of the Euclidean magnitudes of the two vectors and the cosine of the angle between them. These definitions are equivalent when using Cartesian coordinates. In modern geometry, Euclidean spaces are often defined by using vector spaces. In this case, the dot product is used for defining lengths (the length of a vector is the square root of the dot product of the vector by itself) and angles (the cosine of the angle of two vectors is the quotient of their dot product by the product of their lengths).
or
B) The dot product takes two vectors as inputs, and returns a value of 1.0 if they're pointing the same direction, -1.0 if they're pointing in opposite directions, and 0.0 if they're perpendicular (as long as they're unit vectors of equal length). This function can be used for diffuse lighting calculations (i.e. is the light direction facing the same way as the surface?), checking if a point is in front of another point, etc.
In my opinion, the second definition is much more useful for someone interested in 3D on the web, but it's something you won't find in math textbooks.
This is perhaps where I go wrong, as I assume it's 'all the same thing'. I currently work on a web app that provides an editing interface for 2D animation with DOM objects (so, rectangles), so I have a notion of using matrices for camera transforms but the extension into 3D animation seems like another planet. I get what you're saying with the tool perspective, but I'm usually nervous about "how do I fix something if something breaks".
In the past when I've spoken of what I work on with friends of friends who're professionals in other fields, and I'd frequently be asked about my 3D animation skills as they had some business idea they wanted to execute on. This experience was primarily my motivation to looking further into 3D rather than say gaming so gun to my head 3D modeling and editing would be the first stop.
So, it seems to me that if you already do 2D animation, then figuring out 3D should be something you almost think of as guaranteed. Like it's inevitable that you'd get it right if you put in the time, and then you just make some estimate of like, hmm, maybe 6 months, maybe 3 months, but I'm sure to have figured it out by then.
But I also think that this mindset is something that needs to be learned. Maybe it can only be learned by successfully achieving enough new skills adjacent to things you know. So doing so lets you gain the confidence you'll always figure it out given enough time, and then also maybe gives you a kind of mental pattern of ways to successfully do so.
3D demand is only growing because browsers haven’t been able to handle it until recently.
Anecdotally, I develop webgl and the tooling is meh. Far from figured out and even harder if you want to port to React Native too.
As far as math, some is required. But mostly understanding the relationship between position, velocity and acceleration for animations. As well as sin cos and tan for viewport and triangles.
Don’t give up. Age doesn’t matter. Do a little a day.
Luckily, the math for rudimentary 3d is pretty accessible and well documented. There are tons of quality libraries out there for doing linear transformations, so you likely won't need to learn the nuts & bolts unless you really want to. As a bonus, working in 3d is the best way to build an intuition for a lot of linear algebra subjects.
Just keep looking for different niches until you find one that intrigues you enough to get into it without thinking about money. Maybe that niche isn’t even programming.
Never measure yourself by others. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday. You'll always be happier with yourself than you were yesterday and eventually you'll look up and realize someone is looking up to you.
This is especially relevant now as we have instant exposure to the best of the best of any field simply by opening a social media app.
Ooooh yeah. After being in national level sports teams, high-performing bands, I took up swing dancing as a hobby. I was garbage at it. After 5 years I'm approximately mediocre at best. Took me a very long time to come to terms with being not at all talented at something. But it's been a wonderful journey of meeting people, humility and learning how to learn something totally new again. I doubt I'll ever be great, but I have no plans on stopping (global pandemic aside).
> That's because the educated don't want to just "do" , they want to be successful at it.
I've actually observed the opposite. For a non-insignificant number of people, it seems like their university degree is seen primarily as a piece of paper that allows them to demand a high wage while actively avoiding mental or physical exertion.
To be fair, a lot of folks get degrees in part to avoid the sorts of jobs that require physical exertion, which have traditionally been low-skill jobs. I'm not so sure it is true much anymore, considering that a business degree often gets your a retail management job. A fair amount of those store managers unload the truck along with others.
Aside from MBAs (and even of those, the more prestigious among them) after undergraduate $some_profession, when has 'a business degree' ever led to much significantly better than 'a retail management job' on average?
The only problem if there is one IMO is that everyone is so encouraged/socially pressured into university, that even in the absence of any intellectual curiosity or merit in a particular field they must go. So of course certain programmes or universities get saddled with poor 'retail management' (or worse!) metrics.
There is a stigma against not pursuing undergraduate study (ever increasingly far down the socio-economic ladder) and also against having working to lower-middle class jobs with a degree! We can't have it both ways! If so many people should be post-nominally lettered, then naturally so many jobs should be staffed by graduates.
> a piece of paper that allows them to demand a high wage while actively avoiding mental or physical exertion
I’d argue that the piece of paper is more for a semi-secure livable wage than a high wage, with or without physical exertion. From my anecdotal subgroup, I’ve yet to meet a person who expects (let alone: hopes for) high wages (above $25/hr) as a result of their degree.
There are also now a wide range of surrogate activities for doing that come with way less risk of failure than doing: planning the doing, managing the doing, strategizing about doing, ...
Not everyone likes taking risks and dealing with failures (and there will always be some - even if it us just on the way to success).
> My experience has been that it is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated
So, if someone wants to do something to give that person tools to achieve it will be productive.
If someone does Not want to do something it is very difficult to talk them into doing it.
Makes sense. But I do not know in what context this is discussed our what is the supposed implications.
I agree. It really only suggests that incentives are more important than current skill/information.
a) someone has an incentive to do something, but knows not how
b) someone is very agreeable or pliant in their personality, and is willing to carry out instructions if they don't already know how
c) someone's incentives are not well aligned to do the thing, or are not agreeable/pliant enough to do it anyway, but knows how to do it
If I know how to set up and administer a mail server, under c) I won't do it if there are no incentives (e.g. pay). If I need a mail server, but don't know how to do it, as under a) I will pay someone to do it, or to teach me.
b) is probably quiet and long-suffering, but may never understand the whys and wherefores.
So incentives are probably more important than analyzing things in terms of "doers" vs. "non-doers". Could have implications for hiring policies -- less important that candidate does not have 5 years of Frobnitz framework experience, more important to provide an incentive for the candidate to become proficient.
But I think this was not the point. He said "read what you love until you love to read" which sounds like Stockholm Syndrome. So, I don't really think he was saying anything deeper than "follow your bliss", unfortunately.
Part of the problem finding these people is they probably aren't looking to work for you. They know their resume isn't going to pass your assumptions. So instead of applying to jobs they're never be considered for they're out trying to do something instead.
He's a very smart guy but I expect the net result of his work in this area to be basically zero. Doesn't sound like he has the background for it, and the task is genuinely huge.
I am reminded of one of my favourite sitcoms - Blackadder
(shortly after burning Dr Johnson's only manuscript of the Dictionary, and realising it will take ten years to re-create):
"No, I love the dictionary, and would like to have my manservant Baldrick read it. Unfortunately it will take him about ten years to learn to read, so please leave it here."
Carmack hit the nail on the head again. In high school, I had lots of incredibly smart friends who all turned their nose up at the idea of learning how to program. The only person I knew who seemed interested was a sophomore who was retaking his freshman math class. Despite that, I humored him and taught him the basics of Linux one afternoon. The next week when I saw the kid, he was talking about an FTP server he had set up to share movies with his family.
I still get mad about it, because even though I was the one who taught him, I can't help but feel like I've never done anything as cool as that. I most certainly could, but the whole idea jades me and sends me back to the documentation I'm pouring over. Another good example is the "nerds vs hippies" generalization that people like to make: half the world's programmers are immobilized by choice, while the other half is motivated by blindness. Only together can they achieve great things.
In one of the other forums I hang out on, people come in all the time asking if programming is a good way to make tons of money. These people typically dabble for a little bit, get bored, and move on. The ones who just like to mess around, to play with programming, they flourish.
> I still get mad about it, [...] never done anything as cool as that.
Quite the contrary, you should feel proud. IMHO, the real metric of success in life is not what you have achieved, but what your "students" have achieved, so in that metric you're the boss!
Had my share of educated, but unmotivated people I've had to work with. They often have the skill of passing classes, but not other things. It seems like they don't know what a job is, or care to know.
On the other hand, some of the best people I've worked with in software engineering were never officially trained for it.
Doing involves a lot of implicit knowledge that reading frequently fails to cover. There's a density of information in doing that reading sometimes lacks.
I would say there is no way to 100% cover with reading what you need to learn on the job. Also there is no way to cover some concepts with 100% on the job training (much harder to make a HS grad a petroleum engineer by just throwing them on a platform in the gulf without any formal education).
You have to have some implicit knowledge of how things work in order first...but that doesn't always come from formal education.
The challenges are compounded when two people come from very different experiences. The same words mean different things to them and then instead of fostering the transfer of knowledge, "the words get in the way."
I suspect this is a root cause of a lot of social and political friction. Doing or showing is sometimes the only hope of getting past that.
This is why most if not all trades have apprenticeships. You have to know what to do and all see what to do...otherwise you could screw something up because you misinterpreted the instructions or design.
The problem with this phrasing is it implies that motivation is an inherent aspect of individuals. Nobody is a do-er. Motivation is impacted by a variety of factors.
Agreed, and key to both job negotiations and many other situations is to find out what motivates the other party to do as they do, even if it seems to be aligned with your own interests, if the motivation is a different one then that may spell trouble down the road.
While you're right that motivation isn't purely an inherent trait of the individual, it is certainly a factor. The old nature vs nurture (or circumstance) debate. The answer is usually a mix of both.
There's a neurochemical component to it for sure. Motivation is a complicated process that takes place in the brain, and can be influenced by genetics, lifestyle, and drugs.
Some people's brains are just wired from the beginning to be more of a Do-er. Some people gain that skill through practice or drugs, and some people learn to Do in spite of a brain that seems to be constantly fighting against that.
Motivation for a particular thing is also highly dependent on your material circumstances. I ski a lot more living by the mountains than I did when I lived two hours away. I ski a lot less than I did before I had kids.
> Nobody is a do-er. Motivation is impacted by a variety of factors.
Many people are motivated by the satisfaction of getting things done and working together with others toward accomplishing something.
There are many people who are motivating more or less by doing. The people who would still be coding in their spare time if programming jobs paid minimum wage simply because they enjoy doing it.
Counterintuitively, you usually have to pay those people more because they're usually in the highest demand.
Actually there are people who are do-ers. Not everyone is wired the same.
Personally I can’t NOT do things. Regardless of if I get paid, it works out, or I even get yelled at for doing it - I fix things, pull things apart and make them better, clean things up, learn, and solve problems regardless of the discipline. If I’m not doing those things, I feel terrible. If I do those things (and the more the merrier), I feel good. I’ve built large scale engineering teams at FAANG’s and laid (inspected) foundations for buildings I’ve made myself without error - concurrently.
It pays well, if I’m smart enough to do things that provide value and most people can’t. But even if it doesn’t, I can’t help myself.
So far that includes networking, electrical (permitted, household and commercial), coding, welding, machining, commercial contracts, logging, real estate investment, piloting small aircraft, rock climbing, concrete work (inspected, residential and commercial), fathering 2 healthy strong and well adjusted boys, framing, hydraulic engineering and water delivery design, teaching and mentoring many strong leaders, bespoke financial instruments, and many more. All at a level equivalent or exceeding highly rated professionals or successful folks I’ve worked with or partnered with. It’s weird, but it is what it is. I can’t help myself, and it feels almost like a disease sometimes. I did El Capitan (Mescalito) solo aid in my early 20’s for my first big wall, ‘off the couch’.
It causes friction because either people don’t believe it, or once they do they can’t understand it - sometimes they even get angry or resentful. I don’t do it because I’m trying to show off. It just is who I am.
> So far that includes networking, electrical (permitted, household and commercial), coding, welding, machining, commercial contracts, logging, real estate investment, piloting small aircraft, rock climbing, concrete work (inspected, residential and commercial), fathering 2 healthy strong and well adjusted boys, framing, hydraulic engineering and water delivery design, teaching and mentoring many strong leaders, bespoke financial instruments, and many more
I'd be interested to hear the perspective of the people left in your wake. The cost of engaging with a strong-willed "do-er" is what happens when someone, by the do-er's measure, fails to keep up (or, god forbid, gets in the way). At that point, the do-er's productive ability has to be weighed against their capacity (or track record) for coercion or abuse. Steve Jobs comes to mind. If you've personally received pushback or resentment, it may be less out of misunderstanding of, or a lack of appreciation for, your ability, and more to do with your having been an asshole.
But that may just be my own trauma speaking.
In any case, I think a zen approach is often undervalued, especially per productivity and creativity. "Do" is, after all, a verb, not a noun; a performance, not a crafted object. It's one thing to be proud of one's manifest accomplishments, but to define oneself as a "do-er"...? One can "do" a great many things, including "damage" and "harm."
I consistently got top ratings from everyone I worked with as a leader and manager, and the issues I mention have been rare - and generally from those I’ve not wanted to be around because I didn’t agree with their approach or didn’t like their ethics. If that answers your question. Some of
It is from clearly great pain they have been in, in the past, that had nothing to do with me, but was funneled in my direction when I did not fail like they wanted me to.
And I work hard to ensure what is done is the best that can be, and others don’t get hurt. Which, interesting enough, does involve a lot of meditation.
It really doesn't, considering the proposed metric was "perspective of people left in your wake" and not "ratings from colleagues, as related by you." A hypothetical aimed less at considering what people think of you and more of what people think of themselves after having encountered you, it's a matter of who is being centered in such a meditation.
You sound like a great self-marketer. What I've learned is that great self-marketers are fun to be around and work with as long as the reality distortion field is up; however, the risk one takes is in someday finding oneself outside the field, which is a life-altering and frequently psyche-shattering experience. The do-er generally does not care, if they even notice at all; convinced of the virtuousness of their ethos, they're too busy "doing." (Though, to be frank, there is some schadenfreude-tinged consolation in that that often includes "doing" themselves into legal or ethical trouble, or a divorce.)
I'm sorry if that's harsh. I've seen careers destroyed and dreams deferred by people who speak like you speak. Maybe you're different.
You’re welcome to talk to them if you run across them, somehow. I tend to be overly honest, and pretty much the opposite of self marketing.
The only reason I replied here was because I felt it important that folks know where Carmack might be coming from.
The only legal trouble I’ve ever been in, the other side filed to settle and dismiss (which I was ok with, despite having a strong claim for civil damages into the 6 figures on them), because once I pulled my records for the court it was clear they had committed at least one crime of felony perjury - hard to prove, but what I had certainly seemed to
show they had met the bar - and likely 4-5 other identifiable crimes while doing this including potentially criminal conspiracy - for which evidence would
be visible in discovery.
Never had a complaint at work filed against me, never even been questioned by the police or detained except for some speeding tickets a decade ago.
I have had to file criminal complaints against a few people over the years when they persisted in clearly criminal acts despite being confronted about it. I wish I hadn’t needed to, but I made sure to provide a comprehensive set of evidence to the investigators, and they all were seen through.
Also, with projects, I’ve always worked my ass off to make sure we’re persuing solid projects that aren’t pie in the sky BS, and if something isn’t working out, people are able to land well in other teams. I’ve never had to lay people off or fire someone because something blew up, even when it wasn’t my doing. I have been on the receiving end of it happening, which is part of why I care so much to not do that to others I suppose.
It has really not been easy to do so, but I put in the work, because it matters to me.
Replying defensively was a surefire way to prove that you'd missed the point. I'll give that you truly embody the salesman ethos, at least. Unfortunately, that includes a tendency to try to spin potential negatives into positives. What that means is that anyone aware that you are attempting to "sell" cannot trust your characterization of events. And so, I do not.
You know the beauty of not actually selling? That’s ok if you don’t believe or care or whatever.
The only reason I even bother is I guess a version of the whole ‘what if you could go back in time and tell yourself something when you were a kid’.
I honestly had no clue of what was even possible, or what it even meant to be congruent with ones values, and it took a lot of pain, mistakes, and learning to figure it out.
I for one would really like to see more action-bias in the world about me, & less zen / uninvested / amotivated.
Computers are fascinating as heck & we have so much to do. Abiding by the non-weird people who don't see this as the most interesting, fascinating, richly-interesting field, playing by their rules, giving them endless comfort space & grace, being zen about it all... it's boring. It's less than I want to see for humankind.
I find it hard to figure out how the two sides tolerate each other better. Your own phrasing of "I'd be interested to hear the perspective of the people left in your wake" is how I think the overwhelming amount of people feel & see motivated individuals, is what gets thought about them. I try to be sympathetic & helpful & meet people where they want, but I feel like the "normal" behavior to deal with weird people is to be silently pissy & angry & unhelpful & isolate them, to hold them in contempt of normality for their urges to be a bit extra. I don't see a lot of bidirectional sympathy, a lot of recognition that mismatched motivations are a two way street, are a bidirectional issue. And I see a lot of assumptions that the extra behavior is almost always problematic & troublesome.
That seems like extremely useful wiring; it's often an uphill climb for me. Do you have any sense of what is going on under the hood? Why do you feel good if you do these things / bad if you don't? Did this come factory installed, or did things happen in your life which set this in place?
Also, do you feel this trait has made your life happy?
I happen to know two people who have a similar trait. One, I learned, did it to distract themselves from inner demons. I don't know the other well, but they seem to enjoy themselves much more than the first.
Hard to say frankly. Some of it is learned, some pre wired. When I was about 11, and at a friends house, his Dad came home in a rage and started beating him. I intervened, stood up to him (despite him being 2+ ft taller and about 120 lbs bigger than I was at the time and in a raging fury), and made him back down. I remember calculating the odds at the time he would snap and kill me vs back off at the time, and toeing the line I know I would likely get away with to protect my friend. I also remember looking directly into his eyes with cold fury as he raged. My friends Mom talked to my Mom afterwards because she was worried I would get myself killed. My mom made sure to let them know if the father ever did anything like that again, the Sheriff’s would be visiting and not in a friendly way. Both of us have always been that way.
I wouldn’t describe my life as easy - but it has been easier than a great many, and the traumas I’ve been exposed to I’ve handled better than most near as I can tell from this, and haven’t been made worse by it. I haven’t ever really enjoyed easy for the sake of easy?
If and when I feel that I pushed and did what I could, as hard as I could, that feels, at worst, ok. Usually even good? If I made a difference, did something I did not know or others did not know was possible, or helped someone in need and made a difference - that is even better. It is often hard to know the results of ones actions, but I do the best I can. Sometimes, you’re not allowed to know. During my EMT clinical rotations, I held the hand of and calmed an older man with obstructive stroke as they attempted to (and failed) to stent him, as I was the only one with the right type of blood pressure measuring equipment, and I wonder sometimes how he did. He was very scared, and rightfully so - but we aren’t allowed to follow up. His story is one of many I’d like to know, but never will.
When I don’t do the best I can, it feels like I’m wasting my limited time here, and that feels terrible, because I know often what could be. The further I diverge, or even worse, if I don’t live my values - being honest, working hard to make the right thing happen for everyone, learning and pushing myself to grow, facing harder truths or working to improve from mistakes or weaknesses I’ve discovered - the more it bothers me - at first, like a mosquito in the back of my mind, then like a knife in the gut if I refuse to listen.
When I live in line with my values, take care of what is important to me, that is - the right thing. It feels good. Even if it is brutally or emotionally hard work, it feels right, I sleep well, and I’m ready to go the next day.
Very interesting. I think I understand where you're coming from, and also why this is trait is not common.
The values you place focus on are particularly well developed, and it's helpful to see how important they are to you. I tend to default to a goal orientation, with values mostly "implied in" through choices of goals at various levels. I'm going to think about how I might use some of these ideas in my life. Thanks for taking the time!
I’m glad it’s helpful to you. It has taken time to understand - and the single most valuable part, if anything, I’d recommend is spending the time to meditate and understand yourself and how you’re wired, so you can understand and better live in a way that aligns with your values.
The closer you get, the easier it gets, and the better the feedback loop works. It takes time, and never really ends.
I'm in the same group as you. I'm completely unable to keep my stupid mouth shut if I see people doing stupid shit or being inefficient.
This got me promoted at my last company, which was fun for a while, I could actually change the stupid processes and ways of working - but it wasn't my thing in the long run.
Now I'm working in a smaller team as a normal coder and still can't keep my trap shut - but at least people are a lot more experienced and I've got less stuff to complain about =)
When I was younger, I did that a lot. And being around people who are more experienced is a great place to be in general, as it helps to learn!
I learned over time a lot about structural incentives and the environmental and emotional reasons why people do things (including myself), and it’s helped me at least in figuring out how to make the right thing happen more often, instead of causing more friction by pointing out that clearly the right thing is not happening instead. And how to avoid places where their values and mine don’t align, and so I’d just end up constantly trying to swim against the current.
Not sure if it helps - it took time to learn (and prioritize) the mentoring and guiding skills and how to avoid the folks and situations who are real problems.
If we assume doers as being goal-oriented, then I can see it being easier to educate them in ways to help them get closer to their goals faster and more efficiently. On the other hand, someone who doesn't really care about the goal, isn't going to care as much about getting there sooner or in a better fashion.
That said, I've found myself in both camps on various projects. When you're working on something where the end result is really exciting, it makes a huge difference on you and your team. It's exhilarating. On the flip side, projects were you don't care about the end result, are really brutal to work through. You just work for the paycheck. Any sort of educating about how to do things better feels particularly pointless.
Alternative take: in the hiring process education is often used as a proxy for motivation, when actually it only proves that once upon a time someone was motivated long enough to get educated, but it doesn't actually say anything about their present state in terms of motivation.
A 'Do-er' is at least at present motivated, and educating them will get them to the desired combination of education+motivation in the present, even if that education is going to be by necessity a very narrow one (typically: job specific).
Being hungry for money and creature comforts also tends to be conflated with being motivated ('ambitious'), but it doesn't really align well because once financial success (for some very modest success) is attained the motivation will vanish. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it tends to confuse people who were not aware of the driving power being the outwardly visible motivation.
The movie 'Rush' has a nice bit about that, James Hunt just wants to be WDC, once. He doesn't care about anything past that point because it will give him what he wants. But until he's got it he will be super motivated.
>but it doesn't actually say anything about their present state in terms of motivation
If you take the set of all applicants with education and the set of all applicants without, would you claim there is no difference in the distributions of 'do-er'-ness?
This question is somewhat irrelevant, considering you have more information to work from. Given the other constraints you can apply, is level of education still a useful proxy?
Yes, there definitely is - in my experience - but it actually isn't in the direction that you would probably expect it to be in. I don't know how relevant my sample is and of course the sample size is going to be somewhat reduced but in my experience the people without fall into two groups: those that are not motivated at all and those that are highly motivated but in a direction orthogonal to what the education system would expect. Everybody else gets educated normally and ends up somewhere in the middle.
So the really smart people are the high end of the educated ones and the high end of the non-educated people (and with educated I mean university degree and onwards), and between those the gap isn't all that large, it's just that there are many more of those than that there are university educated ones (at least, around me).
Now, obviously if your circle is exclusively composed of well educated people then you will come to a different conclusion, and once you go outside of tech/IT the distribution will likely be a completely different one again.
So that 'set' has many subsets with very different distributions between the subsets.
I've probably done 50 interviews and hired around 10 people. The people doing them with me and I used a decently uniform process to give all applicants the same set of quite varied questions. We also gave the interview process to a decent number of existing employees to see how an existing employee fares.
I started the process thinking education would be quite independent of performance. Our data from the process showed exactly the opposite.
Quality of education, especially at entry level, made a large difference in the process and also in the long term performance of the hires.
Thanks for that quote about officers, it's excellent! Indeed hardworking and stupid are dangerous. I'm not sure if clever and lazy should be put at the top, but they will often find the best solutions.
I think it's probably meaning the same type of laziness that Larry Wall talked about in his three cardinal virtues of a programmer : laziness, impatience, and hubris. The type of laziness and cleverness that will get others to do useful and important work is invaluable.
I'd like to propose another dimension (or perhaps something that counts as a modifier to intelligence): confidence and cowardice. I would describe myself and my high school friends as, nearly universally, clever, lazy, and terrified. The difference between those who today find themselves in successful careers and those who don't is whether or not they acquired some measure of self-confidence in the interim. (If you noticed that this implies that such a personal quality is malleable - and further considered that uncontrollable circumstances might contribute to its shaping - well, yes.)
I do think Joel has some awfully insightful things to say but:
>You should always try to have at least six people interview each candidate that gets hired
Eh. I think this mindset gets taken too literally. That is not something that most companies should be putting candidates through unless they are actually willing to pay for top end talent, and are a tech company who absolutely requires it. Especially paired with:
>Each interview should consist of one interviewer and one interviewee, in a room with a door that closes and a whiteboard. I can tell you from extensive experience that if you spend less than one hour on an interview you’re not going to be able to make a decision.
Yea, no. I am not going to spend 6 hours of my time just because your company is so indecisive, especially with this current job search environment where companies will drop you like a fucking brick and ghost you even after having used hours of your time. I can't help but think a lot of the general shittiness around the hiring process is people taking parts of this article and internalizing them religiously.
I hired someone well educated from a Top Ivy League university but they had no motivation whatsoever. I tried my best, gave them everything they wanted (money, work style, tools, training) but they just wouldn't want to be motivated and we failed collectively. They were very smart otherwise and definitely could learn the skills.
When I am hiring, for me the biggest things are motivation, curiosity and caring for your own career. If you don't show me those traits, I am very hesitant to hire you. I meet a lot of candidates who have no idea why they applied, what they want in life for themselves but are just randomly sending their Resume hoping it sticks.
It isn't that people from Ivy League universities are unmotivated, it is that those people has so many options that unless you are a top company you almost surely wont see them unless there is something wrong with them.
> When I am hiring, for me the biggest things are motivation, curiosity and caring for your own career. If you don't show me those traits, I am very hesitant to hire you.
Yet you just explained that you hired this person just because they had a Top Ivy on their resume. You might not repeat that mistake but you did do it once.
> I meet a lot of candidates who have no idea why they applied, what they want in life for themselves but are just randoming sending their Resume hoping it sticks.
Yeah, well, while I'm working on that I still need to put food on the table, so I'll apologize ahead of time for faking like I give a rats ass about a career long enough to get through the interview process.
Exactly this! I cannot believe someone is naïve enough to think total strangers will start caring about some company's progress, profits and reputation just because they are being paid minimum wage.
Sorry, literally 99% of people who are seen as "do-ers" or motivated are only putting up a show to be hired and to keep their jobs. Being hungry and homeless is a great motivator. None is genuinely excited about your business as much as you are, and if you require them to be, then pay them a CEO salary.
This doesn't make sense. There are loads of people (myself included) who are intrinsically motivated to do good work.
And not just in the tech industry. Look at all the volunteer opportunities, unpajd city boards, etc that people get themselves involved in. People can be motivated by wanting to make a difference. And yes, some software companies do in fact make products and services that make a difference in people's lives.
> Look at all the volunteer opportunities, unpajd city boards, etc that people get themselves involved in.
Positions such as these often pay in increased social status. Just because the compensation is intangible doesn’t mean it’s not real. Working at an animal shelter may well raise your status with potential partners. Working on a city advisory board will definitely get you noticed and can be a stepping board toward political office. And even an unpaid senior position at a well-funded and prestigious foundation results in a great deal of clout.
It's not always social status, especially for people who volunteer but don't tell anyone. It can often be ideology and principles, from people who want to pay a favour forward (e.g. if they received help from the past).
I do agree there are other intangibles, though (sense of community with fellow volunteers, sense of freedom by doing something exceptional, work experience). These intangibles are good things (mutual benefit).
Some people also benefit without expectation of reward. There could be an argument of self-interest (e.g. to feel good or alleviate some past wrong), but in practice, it makes sense to just thank these people for their actions without worrying about their motivations (which they might not even definitively know).
> Working at an animal shelter may well raise your status with potential partners.
This sounds like an unhealthily cynical view to hold. I certainly hope it does not come as a surprise to hear that some people just genuinely do love animals. Not everything in life boils down to running laps on a hedonic treadmill.
The same often applies at work though. Someone who is known as the top 'x' in their company/field gains social status among that peer group, if they're interested in that sort of thing. After all you spend a lot of time with work colleagues when you're at work.
To add to the other comments. That is not how everyone is wired. Some good friends of mine give everything at work and often have trouble to stop thinking about work afterwards. These people worked in shitty private sector jobs, governmental positions and other career paths that will never reward their work with richness.
I personally don't get it. It actually frustrates me a little, they are talented and could achieve real wealth if they'd cared for that. But I accept that people who just work 100% no matter what exist.
Everyone knows why they applied, but for the benefit of employers, we have created a society in which it is not acceptable to say "I'm only here for the money, I literally do not care about your company."
Imagine there are two applicants who are equal in every way, just that one genuinely likes the job and has the same goals as the company, and the other is just there for the money. It's not hard to see why anyone would prefer the first candidate. That's the one who is motivated and will go above and beyond if required.
As a secondary effect, applicants of course notice that they are more likely to be hired if they just pretend like they care. And if everyone pretends, the one person who says they are just there for the money is at a disadvantage to everyone else.
> As a secondary effect, applicants of course notice that they are more likely to be hired if they just pretend like they care. And if everyone pretends, the one person who says they are just there for the money is at a disadvantage to everyone else.
I've seen people motivate this by saying that not faking it shows you lack social skills. In the end the customer is never wrong, and when you are selling your time the customer is your manager so keep that smile up! (I hate this culture, but I adapted just like everyone else)
Okay, but even without the second-order effects of signaling games, selecting for enthusiasm is a risky strategy because earnest motivation is not the only or even the most important factor in their contribution. In many cases, a competent professional who gets you the best result might be someone who gives no fucks about the business inherently but does a good job because this strategy betters their reputation (or just their value full stop to their present employer) over time and thus their expected payscale, or just happens to be good at the thing and just wants a stable paycheck.
There two major reasons this matters:
1. In many cases no amount of enthusiasm for your business is more valuable than the hard skills you need. If it were, why can't you, the founder, with enough enthusiasm to start the business in the first place, simply do everything?
2. Genuine enthusiasm is *volatile*. If someone who isn't making business decisions cares deeply about the business' stated goals, they may well take a minor pivot or a strategic choice they disagree with as a slight or even a betrayal, and that enthusiasm quickly disappears or goes negative. In contrast, your indifferent professional has transparent and predictable motivations and you can stay aligned merely by continuing to pay them enough.
Personally, I think people select for enthusiasm about the business for the same reason they might select friends who tell them how cool or attractive or smart they are, and it's a not an amazing strategy for similar reasons.
> genuinely likes the job and has the same goals as the company
It's impossible, unless he holds a large portion of the shares of the company. One of the goals of the company is to replace the guy with someone cheaper or find a way to no need him at all.
I could agree if you're referring to low skill or some entry level jobs. For later professional jobs, this may be true for some, but a lot of people really do have professional career interests, and all things being equal, it's normal for an employer to prefer people who want to be there for more than a paycheck.
I've had a few glimpses of what it's like to hate your job and just be there because you need or want the money, and personally, I'm motivated by never wanting to be in that position.
> I meet a lot of candidates who have no idea why they applied, what they want in life for themselves but are just randomly sending their Resume hoping it sticks.
The problem is that finding something isn't optional, so when your dream doesn't work out, it is just a matter of finding what else might accept you.
So many people, when asked about what they want from life, are essentially asking back, "what are my options?"
I have to shake my head when reading some of the replies the parent poster is getting. It is sobering to see so many who have no love for their profession and are trapped into staying solely for money; that's a recipe for an unhappy existence, as can be seen from the bitterness evident in their words.
Many people wouldn't be at their jobs if they weren't paid to do them. Many people don't do what they do out of love for the work.
"On the whole, American workers are generally satisfied with their jobs. Even so, a significant share (30%) view the work they do as “just a job to get them by,” rather than a career or a steppingstone to a career. Views about work are sharply divided along socio-economic lines, and the sense of vulnerability is most acute among workers with no college education and lower-than-average household incomes."
"In addition to job satisfaction, the survey explored what American workers’ jobs mean to them – are their jobs central to who they are, or are they mainly just a source of income? About half (51%) of employed Americans say they get a sense of identity from their job, while the other half (47%) say their job is just what they do for a living. And about half (51%) of all U.S. workers say they view their job as a career, while 18% see it as a steppingstone to a career and 30% say it’s just a job to get them by."
Sure, that's true for the general population but I don't think that applies here. While software isn't quite as demanding as say law or medicine, it still takes quite a bit of effort and skill to become truly proficient in our profession. Anyone talented enough to succeed at building software is also talented enough to succeed at other well paying professions; it cannot be said that we didn't choose the profession we're currently employed in.
Why doesn't apply here? Just because you have the intelligence and access to education to become a well paid professional doesn't mean there's a career out there that you're going to love. And as another poster also pointed out that it's not all or nothing, there's a lot of middle ground. You can have actively chose this career without 'loving' it.
Personally I find understanding how software and technology works really interesting (I enjoy understanding how 'things' work in general). I also find programming tasks reasonable engaging, if very frustrating at times. They're not my favourite type of problem solving but it's fun. So Software is a reasonably interesting profession and it comes with good money, plenty of opportunity and lot of flexibility.
That said if I had enough money to retire I'd happily leave it and stop programming. My curiosity is largely satisfied and there are other things I'd rather spend my time doing, such as acting, running or studying one of the countless other subjects that interests me. But it's hard to impossible to make a good living doing those things so I keep working as a software engineer and do those things in my spare time. And that's fine. As I say it's moderately interesting and definitely better than most of the alternatives. And I do take pride and interest in my work. But I don't love it and while my career is up there on my priority list it's never going to be top.
Meh, there are in-betweens. I neither love my profession nor feel trapped by it. It's a decent and low-stress way to make good enough money such that I can do things I actually love, such as spending time with my wife and son, or playing sports. If I were rich I wouldn't do any coding, and I doubt there are many in the profession who would. Not because I hate coding, it's fine, I just like other things more.
You can have love for the profession and no especially additional love for the job you apply for and perhaps get hired to. I’ve settled before like that, and as long as the people you work with and for are open enough, you can make it more into the job you want.
I personally don't care about tech and take no enjoyment out of programming. I've tried to force myself for years to do side projects and find something in here that is enjoyable. Nothing is. How much I wish I could simply alter my motivation, but no one is the master of his muse.
I don't hate programming. They money is good. Everything else I could do, would come with a serious slash to my salary. And that's just something else. Jobs that might be interesting require additional years of degrees. It's too late for that.
What remains? It is hard to keep the motivation going. I wish it wouldn't be like this. I want to give 100%, each day. But I can't force myself to care. I tried. Let's see how long I can go on like this.
This is probably running into a different issue, which is most people have a finite amount of programming (or intense concentration work) in them per day. For me that's 3-4 hours, for most creative people that number is pretty similar. Beyond that you get vastly diminishing returns and worse trying to do a "side project" involves a massive context shift that is mentally exhausting in of itself.
Once I accepted that after 3-4 hours (well realistically about 6 when you factor in breaks) I'm effectively done for the day my stress levels went way down.
"meet a lot of candidates who have no idea why they applied, what they want in life for themselves"
I feel that in this discussion we are conflating being lost and being unmotivated - they could be highly motivated and trying every opportunity, but have no clue what they are doing.
The career one can be hard. I typically care more than most. I thrive in environments where what I’m doing adds value and fits my own values. I love the challenge, I love building, I love working with amazing people. I’m nearer the end of my career than beginning and I’m still not too sure what I want.
This only applies to entry level jobs for new grads. What else do they have to go off of? After 5-10 years they don't care about your formal education.
And since (according to you) the educated person was motivated too at one point, there's no guarantee that a 'do-er' will remain motivated. We also know that at one point (s)he wasn't motivated.
Furthermore, how do you even tell who is a "do-er"? How do you know that that person has the capabilities of learning the task? How much are you willing to invest in education vs. "losing" on hiring the educated person?
Everyone knows that it's our (old people) job to say "It can't be done!"
Younger folks are supposed to be "boundary pushers," because they don't know that it can't be done. They keep trying, until they give birth to beautiful unicorns.
Has nothing to do with education, and everything to do with age and [lack of] experience.
Disrupt! FTW!
At least, that's what they tell me, while dissing my experience.
The horn on the baby is fully formed and while coming "out", a majority of the time it kills the mother and in turn dies without proper care. Only a very small percentage of unicorn mothers survive and in turn the babies. This is why unicorns are rare ;)
I tend to think of "educated" as meaning "having done this before", while do-er is someone who will maintain motivation.
Someone who thrives on novelty will be an uneducated-doer at the start of a project, then convert to an educated-apathetic after completing it. They won't be inspired to do the same thing again because it's not novel. But while it is novel, you can bet they will dedicate a lot of time to it.
Someone who thrives are familiarity will start as an uneducated-apathetic. They will get frozen due to not knowing what to do. But with guidance they can be taught what to do, then will go on to be an educated-doer. These people are happy to keep doing the same projects over and over again. They like what they know.
Most of us fall somewhere in the middle. But I'm sure most of us have worked with both types: the hyper-focused person who works 80 hours a week to get some cool PoC out the door; and the "stick to the process we have in place, please" type. Both are valuable in certain situations, and a liability in others. Carmack and Torvalds appear to be the first kind of person -- granted, I've never met them -- but they do seem to like to build amazing things, then hand them over to someone else to maintain.
I know lots of successful devs who are the latter. They crank out the same kind of code for clients project after project, and will happily work with tools like Wordpress because that's what they know and it makes them money.
If a CTO asks me to do something I think is initially infeasible, that’s my opportunity to try my best to figure it out not my free pass to sit and complain about what I was assigned to do.
If it really is infeasible it’s a win win. Either I figure out how to do something nobody else could have done or I end up giving the next person tasked to take a swing a lot of info about what doesn’t work and maybe they figure it out.
you are the person I hire. I will often know there are a great many unknowns. I also may know it's not possible. But the attempt often yields its own value. Also you can very often sell a close approximation of the actual impossible thing.
John Carmack works on cutting edge technology, so he embarks on things that are already difficult and the answer is not known ahead of time. Now if you are talking about deadlines, then sure. It can be intuited if the deadline is unreasonable. There are problems out there where the answer isn't known or even close to being known without significant effort. A "Do-er" in the case is valuable because they are willing to go the distance to try things. Though I will say, its unclear why an educated person cannot also be a Do-er. Those are two independent variables IMO. I would say I'm a Do-er and I got educated so I could "do" more.
Also easier to convince someone ignorant of the problem domain that they have an adequate understanding of the problem domain, than to convince someone with an comprehensive understanding of the problem domain that the problem is solvable and worth investing effort into.
> It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated
I really like the current HN title.
It has nothing to do with the tweet which I don't understand at all.
The comment the tweet is based on is also really good -
> "Read what you love until you love to read"
It's why we need to get internet porn, shopping, Netflix and video games to the poor. And burn to the ground the idealists who want to get them Wikipedia.
Is this really useful, or another rationalization for choosing the less educated option, believing they are easier motivated? It is a grand generalization. As an accomplished do-er with multiple degrees, would I be filtered out via this thinking?
Aside from the fact that the two are not mutually exclusive but rather fit a DE,D!E,!DE,!D!E pairing resulting in a higher number of non-doer (!D) educated (E) people in industry, the statement is quite on point. Being a doer implies that you will by definition get more out of an education.
I have a lot of respect for Carmack but I wish he wouldn't tweet things like this. It just feeds into confirmation bias. You could say the same thing about the work ethic of immigrants... well yes, it's self selecting. Just like the autodidacts who make careers without formal education. For the vast majority of us, an education has huge benefits. And for the hard sciences and math, it's generally just too hard to "do" without learning first.
It's always odd when people with at least a somewhat scientific world view decide they can draw broad conclusions from their extremely limited experience, especially when they start throwing around hopelessly vague, impossible to measure terms like "do-er".
It's great to share your personal experience, that's not worthless, but you gotta understand and accept the limitations of that.
Partially depends on how skilled you are at educating and at motivating.
Tech is a very thing-oriented and idea-oriented line of work, and motivating others is a people-oriented task. You need to be inclined toward knowing other people and understanding what makes them tick. Then you can show them connection between that and the work you're doing.
There's no reason one person can't be good at all of that, but the field attracts people who are good at the thing-oriented and idea-oriented stuff since that's the main need.
I am increasingly of the opinion that there is little difference between doing and learning. In fact I would argue that anyone who thinks you can learn without doing is simply wrong.
No, I have no opinion about picking people. What I do have is the notion that it's very easy to convince yourself that you know when you just have theory. (I have a physics degree, and that seems to come with the territory - there is an XKCD cartoon, of course, that lampoons the physicist considering some long-standing problem in biology or chemistry and believing that the idea they just had after 2 minutes would be somehow novel or useful.)
Theory is great, and opens a lot of possibilities. But until you pull out the soldering iron, or the compiler, or the hammer and saw, and make mistakes, you can't really say you know a thing. At best, you know how to start.
Are you saying you learned nothing in your physics degree? You learn different things when you do stuff like soldering, but you still learn things when you practice math and theoretical problems.
The main value of a degree is that basically nobody learn those things properly on the job. So after a few years in industry the person with a degree now knows both theory and practice, while those who just worked only knows the practice and has a glaring lack of theory. And theory is extremely valuable, modern society cannot function without having a lot of people who understands the theory well. Not everyone needs it but some do.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 235 ms ] threadPick a small goal and work towards that.
Break the problem down in to small steps and find ways of solving each step that works best for you.
You might find you don’t even need any of those textbooks.
In my opinion, learning to use math functions as tools rather than having a deep understanding of how they work is an equally valid approach. I know several great WebGL developers who really aren't very good at math.
Consider the following definitions of the dot product:
A) Algebraically, the dot product is the sum of the products of the corresponding entries of the two sequences of numbers. Geometrically, it is the product of the Euclidean magnitudes of the two vectors and the cosine of the angle between them. These definitions are equivalent when using Cartesian coordinates. In modern geometry, Euclidean spaces are often defined by using vector spaces. In this case, the dot product is used for defining lengths (the length of a vector is the square root of the dot product of the vector by itself) and angles (the cosine of the angle of two vectors is the quotient of their dot product by the product of their lengths).
or
B) The dot product takes two vectors as inputs, and returns a value of 1.0 if they're pointing the same direction, -1.0 if they're pointing in opposite directions, and 0.0 if they're perpendicular (as long as they're unit vectors of equal length). This function can be used for diffuse lighting calculations (i.e. is the light direction facing the same way as the surface?), checking if a point is in front of another point, etc.
In my opinion, the second definition is much more useful for someone interested in 3D on the web, but it's something you won't find in math textbooks.
This is perhaps where I go wrong, as I assume it's 'all the same thing'. I currently work on a web app that provides an editing interface for 2D animation with DOM objects (so, rectangles), so I have a notion of using matrices for camera transforms but the extension into 3D animation seems like another planet. I get what you're saying with the tool perspective, but I'm usually nervous about "how do I fix something if something breaks".
In the past when I've spoken of what I work on with friends of friends who're professionals in other fields, and I'd frequently be asked about my 3D animation skills as they had some business idea they wanted to execute on. This experience was primarily my motivation to looking further into 3D rather than say gaming so gun to my head 3D modeling and editing would be the first stop.
But the comments here have been helpful
But I also think that this mindset is something that needs to be learned. Maybe it can only be learned by successfully achieving enough new skills adjacent to things you know. So doing so lets you gain the confidence you'll always figure it out given enough time, and then also maybe gives you a kind of mental pattern of ways to successfully do so.
Anecdotally, I develop webgl and the tooling is meh. Far from figured out and even harder if you want to port to React Native too.
As far as math, some is required. But mostly understanding the relationship between position, velocity and acceleration for animations. As well as sin cos and tan for viewport and triangles.
Don’t give up. Age doesn’t matter. Do a little a day.
Luckily, the math for rudimentary 3d is pretty accessible and well documented. There are tons of quality libraries out there for doing linear transformations, so you likely won't need to learn the nuts & bolts unless you really want to. As a bonus, working in 3d is the best way to build an intuition for a lot of linear algebra subjects.
This is especially relevant now as we have instant exposure to the best of the best of any field simply by opening a social media app.
Yeah this is something I definitely struggle with
The most ambitious want to be "world class good at it" . Hence nothing gets ever started because it seems like an unsurmountable mountain to climb.
But there is a silver lining. The possibility of exploring social relationships.
With regards to social relationships it doesn't really matter if you are having a party in Beverly Hills or in Des Moines.
It's exactly the same thing.
I've actually observed the opposite. For a non-insignificant number of people, it seems like their university degree is seen primarily as a piece of paper that allows them to demand a high wage while actively avoiding mental or physical exertion.
The only problem if there is one IMO is that everyone is so encouraged/socially pressured into university, that even in the absence of any intellectual curiosity or merit in a particular field they must go. So of course certain programmes or universities get saddled with poor 'retail management' (or worse!) metrics.
There is a stigma against not pursuing undergraduate study (ever increasingly far down the socio-economic ladder) and also against having working to lower-middle class jobs with a degree! We can't have it both ways! If so many people should be post-nominally lettered, then naturally so many jobs should be staffed by graduates.
I’d argue that the piece of paper is more for a semi-secure livable wage than a high wage, with or without physical exertion. From my anecdotal subgroup, I’ve yet to meet a person who expects (let alone: hopes for) high wages (above $25/hr) as a result of their degree.
Not everyone likes taking risks and dealing with failures (and there will always be some - even if it us just on the way to success).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28753560
So, if someone wants to do something to give that person tools to achieve it will be productive. If someone does Not want to do something it is very difficult to talk them into doing it.
Makes sense. But I do not know in what context this is discussed our what is the supposed implications.
a) someone has an incentive to do something, but knows not how
b) someone is very agreeable or pliant in their personality, and is willing to carry out instructions if they don't already know how
c) someone's incentives are not well aligned to do the thing, or are not agreeable/pliant enough to do it anyway, but knows how to do it
If I know how to set up and administer a mail server, under c) I won't do it if there are no incentives (e.g. pay). If I need a mail server, but don't know how to do it, as under a) I will pay someone to do it, or to teach me.
b) is probably quiet and long-suffering, but may never understand the whys and wherefores.
So incentives are probably more important than analyzing things in terms of "doers" vs. "non-doers". Could have implications for hiring policies -- less important that candidate does not have 5 years of Frobnitz framework experience, more important to provide an incentive for the candidate to become proficient.
But I think this was not the point. He said "read what you love until you love to read" which sounds like Stockholm Syndrome. So, I don't really think he was saying anything deeper than "follow your bliss", unfortunately.
Suggests he at least hasn't given up.
He's a very smart guy but I expect the net result of his work in this area to be basically zero. Doesn't sound like he has the background for it, and the task is genuinely huge.
(shortly after burning Dr Johnson's only manuscript of the Dictionary, and realising it will take ten years to re-create):
"No, I love the dictionary, and would like to have my manservant Baldrick read it. Unfortunately it will take him about ten years to learn to read, so please leave it here."
I still get mad about it, because even though I was the one who taught him, I can't help but feel like I've never done anything as cool as that. I most certainly could, but the whole idea jades me and sends me back to the documentation I'm pouring over. Another good example is the "nerds vs hippies" generalization that people like to make: half the world's programmers are immobilized by choice, while the other half is motivated by blindness. Only together can they achieve great things.
Quite the contrary, you should feel proud. IMHO, the real metric of success in life is not what you have achieved, but what your "students" have achieved, so in that metric you're the boss!
On the other hand, some of the best people I've worked with in software engineering were never officially trained for it.
There are good points and bad points to that.
You have to have some implicit knowledge of how things work in order first...but that doesn't always come from formal education.
I suspect this is a root cause of a lot of social and political friction. Doing or showing is sometimes the only hope of getting past that.
Some people's brains are just wired from the beginning to be more of a Do-er. Some people gain that skill through practice or drugs, and some people learn to Do in spite of a brain that seems to be constantly fighting against that.
It's easier to educate the motivated than motivate the educated.
Many people are motivated by the satisfaction of getting things done and working together with others toward accomplishing something.
There are many people who are motivating more or less by doing. The people who would still be coding in their spare time if programming jobs paid minimum wage simply because they enjoy doing it.
Counterintuitively, you usually have to pay those people more because they're usually in the highest demand.
Surely you can grant some people are consistently motivated than some others.
Personally I can’t NOT do things. Regardless of if I get paid, it works out, or I even get yelled at for doing it - I fix things, pull things apart and make them better, clean things up, learn, and solve problems regardless of the discipline. If I’m not doing those things, I feel terrible. If I do those things (and the more the merrier), I feel good. I’ve built large scale engineering teams at FAANG’s and laid (inspected) foundations for buildings I’ve made myself without error - concurrently.
It pays well, if I’m smart enough to do things that provide value and most people can’t. But even if it doesn’t, I can’t help myself.
So far that includes networking, electrical (permitted, household and commercial), coding, welding, machining, commercial contracts, logging, real estate investment, piloting small aircraft, rock climbing, concrete work (inspected, residential and commercial), fathering 2 healthy strong and well adjusted boys, framing, hydraulic engineering and water delivery design, teaching and mentoring many strong leaders, bespoke financial instruments, and many more. All at a level equivalent or exceeding highly rated professionals or successful folks I’ve worked with or partnered with. It’s weird, but it is what it is. I can’t help myself, and it feels almost like a disease sometimes. I did El Capitan (Mescalito) solo aid in my early 20’s for my first big wall, ‘off the couch’.
It causes friction because either people don’t believe it, or once they do they can’t understand it - sometimes they even get angry or resentful. I don’t do it because I’m trying to show off. It just is who I am.
Is your name James Bond by any chance?
But that may just be my own trauma speaking.
In any case, I think a zen approach is often undervalued, especially per productivity and creativity. "Do" is, after all, a verb, not a noun; a performance, not a crafted object. It's one thing to be proud of one's manifest accomplishments, but to define oneself as a "do-er"...? One can "do" a great many things, including "damage" and "harm."
And I work hard to ensure what is done is the best that can be, and others don’t get hurt. Which, interesting enough, does involve a lot of meditation.
It really doesn't, considering the proposed metric was "perspective of people left in your wake" and not "ratings from colleagues, as related by you." A hypothetical aimed less at considering what people think of you and more of what people think of themselves after having encountered you, it's a matter of who is being centered in such a meditation.
You sound like a great self-marketer. What I've learned is that great self-marketers are fun to be around and work with as long as the reality distortion field is up; however, the risk one takes is in someday finding oneself outside the field, which is a life-altering and frequently psyche-shattering experience. The do-er generally does not care, if they even notice at all; convinced of the virtuousness of their ethos, they're too busy "doing." (Though, to be frank, there is some schadenfreude-tinged consolation in that that often includes "doing" themselves into legal or ethical trouble, or a divorce.)
I'm sorry if that's harsh. I've seen careers destroyed and dreams deferred by people who speak like you speak. Maybe you're different.
The only reason I replied here was because I felt it important that folks know where Carmack might be coming from.
The only legal trouble I’ve ever been in, the other side filed to settle and dismiss (which I was ok with, despite having a strong claim for civil damages into the 6 figures on them), because once I pulled my records for the court it was clear they had committed at least one crime of felony perjury - hard to prove, but what I had certainly seemed to show they had met the bar - and likely 4-5 other identifiable crimes while doing this including potentially criminal conspiracy - for which evidence would be visible in discovery.
Never had a complaint at work filed against me, never even been questioned by the police or detained except for some speeding tickets a decade ago.
I have had to file criminal complaints against a few people over the years when they persisted in clearly criminal acts despite being confronted about it. I wish I hadn’t needed to, but I made sure to provide a comprehensive set of evidence to the investigators, and they all were seen through.
Also, with projects, I’ve always worked my ass off to make sure we’re persuing solid projects that aren’t pie in the sky BS, and if something isn’t working out, people are able to land well in other teams. I’ve never had to lay people off or fire someone because something blew up, even when it wasn’t my doing. I have been on the receiving end of it happening, which is part of why I care so much to not do that to others I suppose.
It has really not been easy to do so, but I put in the work, because it matters to me.
The only reason I even bother is I guess a version of the whole ‘what if you could go back in time and tell yourself something when you were a kid’.
I honestly had no clue of what was even possible, or what it even meant to be congruent with ones values, and it took a lot of pain, mistakes, and learning to figure it out.
Enjoy, and I wish you luck with your adventures.
Computers are fascinating as heck & we have so much to do. Abiding by the non-weird people who don't see this as the most interesting, fascinating, richly-interesting field, playing by their rules, giving them endless comfort space & grace, being zen about it all... it's boring. It's less than I want to see for humankind.
I find it hard to figure out how the two sides tolerate each other better. Your own phrasing of "I'd be interested to hear the perspective of the people left in your wake" is how I think the overwhelming amount of people feel & see motivated individuals, is what gets thought about them. I try to be sympathetic & helpful & meet people where they want, but I feel like the "normal" behavior to deal with weird people is to be silently pissy & angry & unhelpful & isolate them, to hold them in contempt of normality for their urges to be a bit extra. I don't see a lot of bidirectional sympathy, a lot of recognition that mismatched motivations are a two way street, are a bidirectional issue. And I see a lot of assumptions that the extra behavior is almost always problematic & troublesome.
Also, do you feel this trait has made your life happy?
I happen to know two people who have a similar trait. One, I learned, did it to distract themselves from inner demons. I don't know the other well, but they seem to enjoy themselves much more than the first.
I wouldn’t describe my life as easy - but it has been easier than a great many, and the traumas I’ve been exposed to I’ve handled better than most near as I can tell from this, and haven’t been made worse by it. I haven’t ever really enjoyed easy for the sake of easy?
If and when I feel that I pushed and did what I could, as hard as I could, that feels, at worst, ok. Usually even good? If I made a difference, did something I did not know or others did not know was possible, or helped someone in need and made a difference - that is even better. It is often hard to know the results of ones actions, but I do the best I can. Sometimes, you’re not allowed to know. During my EMT clinical rotations, I held the hand of and calmed an older man with obstructive stroke as they attempted to (and failed) to stent him, as I was the only one with the right type of blood pressure measuring equipment, and I wonder sometimes how he did. He was very scared, and rightfully so - but we aren’t allowed to follow up. His story is one of many I’d like to know, but never will.
When I don’t do the best I can, it feels like I’m wasting my limited time here, and that feels terrible, because I know often what could be. The further I diverge, or even worse, if I don’t live my values - being honest, working hard to make the right thing happen for everyone, learning and pushing myself to grow, facing harder truths or working to improve from mistakes or weaknesses I’ve discovered - the more it bothers me - at first, like a mosquito in the back of my mind, then like a knife in the gut if I refuse to listen.
When I live in line with my values, take care of what is important to me, that is - the right thing. It feels good. Even if it is brutally or emotionally hard work, it feels right, I sleep well, and I’m ready to go the next day.
Avoidance and denial is what hurts.
The values you place focus on are particularly well developed, and it's helpful to see how important they are to you. I tend to default to a goal orientation, with values mostly "implied in" through choices of goals at various levels. I'm going to think about how I might use some of these ideas in my life. Thanks for taking the time!
The closer you get, the easier it gets, and the better the feedback loop works. It takes time, and never really ends.
This got me promoted at my last company, which was fun for a while, I could actually change the stupid processes and ways of working - but it wasn't my thing in the long run.
Now I'm working in a smaller team as a normal coder and still can't keep my trap shut - but at least people are a lot more experienced and I've got less stuff to complain about =)
I learned over time a lot about structural incentives and the environmental and emotional reasons why people do things (including myself), and it’s helped me at least in figuring out how to make the right thing happen more often, instead of causing more friction by pointing out that clearly the right thing is not happening instead. And how to avoid places where their values and mine don’t align, and so I’d just end up constantly trying to swim against the current.
Not sure if it helps - it took time to learn (and prioritize) the mentoring and guiding skills and how to avoid the folks and situations who are real problems.
That said, I've found myself in both camps on various projects. When you're working on something where the end result is really exciting, it makes a huge difference on you and your team. It's exhilarating. On the flip side, projects were you don't care about the end result, are really brutal to work through. You just work for the paycheck. Any sort of educating about how to do things better feels particularly pointless.
>projects were you don't care about the end result, are really brutal
Yup, better to have no goal than a misguided objective, if you can still have decent accomplishments occurring at a non-stop pace.
>it is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated
Regardless, I'm going to continue to push to the max in both categories.
So what if it takes twice as much action.
A 'Do-er' is at least at present motivated, and educating them will get them to the desired combination of education+motivation in the present, even if that education is going to be by necessity a very narrow one (typically: job specific).
Being hungry for money and creature comforts also tends to be conflated with being motivated ('ambitious'), but it doesn't really align well because once financial success (for some very modest success) is attained the motivation will vanish. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it tends to confuse people who were not aware of the driving power being the outwardly visible motivation.
The movie 'Rush' has a nice bit about that, James Hunt just wants to be WDC, once. He doesn't care about anything past that point because it will give him what he wants. But until he's got it he will be super motivated.
If you take the set of all applicants with education and the set of all applicants without, would you claim there is no difference in the distributions of 'do-er'-ness?
So the really smart people are the high end of the educated ones and the high end of the non-educated people (and with educated I mean university degree and onwards), and between those the gap isn't all that large, it's just that there are many more of those than that there are university educated ones (at least, around me).
Now, obviously if your circle is exclusively composed of well educated people then you will come to a different conclusion, and once you go outside of tech/IT the distribution will likely be a completely different one again.
So that 'set' has many subsets with very different distributions between the subsets.
I started the process thinking education would be quite independent of performance. Our data from the process showed exactly the opposite.
Quality of education, especially at entry level, made a large difference in the process and also in the long term performance of the hires.
EDIT: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-guid...
on the other hand, here was the quote on choosing officers, which might be a different position altogther:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord#Cl...
>You should always try to have at least six people interview each candidate that gets hired
Eh. I think this mindset gets taken too literally. That is not something that most companies should be putting candidates through unless they are actually willing to pay for top end talent, and are a tech company who absolutely requires it. Especially paired with:
>Each interview should consist of one interviewer and one interviewee, in a room with a door that closes and a whiteboard. I can tell you from extensive experience that if you spend less than one hour on an interview you’re not going to be able to make a decision.
Yea, no. I am not going to spend 6 hours of my time just because your company is so indecisive, especially with this current job search environment where companies will drop you like a fucking brick and ghost you even after having used hours of your time. I can't help but think a lot of the general shittiness around the hiring process is people taking parts of this article and internalizing them religiously.
When I am hiring, for me the biggest things are motivation, curiosity and caring for your own career. If you don't show me those traits, I am very hesitant to hire you. I meet a lot of candidates who have no idea why they applied, what they want in life for themselves but are just randomly sending their Resume hoping it sticks.
> When I am hiring, for me the biggest things are motivation, curiosity and caring for your own career. If you don't show me those traits, I am very hesitant to hire you.
Yet you just explained that you hired this person just because they had a Top Ivy on their resume. You might not repeat that mistake but you did do it once.
Yeah, well, while I'm working on that I still need to put food on the table, so I'll apologize ahead of time for faking like I give a rats ass about a career long enough to get through the interview process.
I suspect those candidates know very well why they applied. It just is a socially demanded requirement that they don’t give that particular reason.
Sorry, literally 99% of people who are seen as "do-ers" or motivated are only putting up a show to be hired and to keep their jobs. Being hungry and homeless is a great motivator. None is genuinely excited about your business as much as you are, and if you require them to be, then pay them a CEO salary.
And not just in the tech industry. Look at all the volunteer opportunities, unpajd city boards, etc that people get themselves involved in. People can be motivated by wanting to make a difference. And yes, some software companies do in fact make products and services that make a difference in people's lives.
Positions such as these often pay in increased social status. Just because the compensation is intangible doesn’t mean it’s not real. Working at an animal shelter may well raise your status with potential partners. Working on a city advisory board will definitely get you noticed and can be a stepping board toward political office. And even an unpaid senior position at a well-funded and prestigious foundation results in a great deal of clout.
I do agree there are other intangibles, though (sense of community with fellow volunteers, sense of freedom by doing something exceptional, work experience). These intangibles are good things (mutual benefit).
Some people also benefit without expectation of reward. There could be an argument of self-interest (e.g. to feel good or alleviate some past wrong), but in practice, it makes sense to just thank these people for their actions without worrying about their motivations (which they might not even definitively know).
This sounds like an unhealthily cynical view to hold. I certainly hope it does not come as a surprise to hear that some people just genuinely do love animals. Not everything in life boils down to running laps on a hedonic treadmill.
I personally don't get it. It actually frustrates me a little, they are talented and could achieve real wealth if they'd cared for that. But I accept that people who just work 100% no matter what exist.
It is often the problem that employers equate "caring for your career" to "caring for my company's profits".
As a secondary effect, applicants of course notice that they are more likely to be hired if they just pretend like they care. And if everyone pretends, the one person who says they are just there for the money is at a disadvantage to everyone else.
I've seen people motivate this by saying that not faking it shows you lack social skills. In the end the customer is never wrong, and when you are selling your time the customer is your manager so keep that smile up! (I hate this culture, but I adapted just like everyone else)
There two major reasons this matters:
1. In many cases no amount of enthusiasm for your business is more valuable than the hard skills you need. If it were, why can't you, the founder, with enough enthusiasm to start the business in the first place, simply do everything?
2. Genuine enthusiasm is *volatile*. If someone who isn't making business decisions cares deeply about the business' stated goals, they may well take a minor pivot or a strategic choice they disagree with as a slight or even a betrayal, and that enthusiasm quickly disappears or goes negative. In contrast, your indifferent professional has transparent and predictable motivations and you can stay aligned merely by continuing to pay them enough.
Personally, I think people select for enthusiasm about the business for the same reason they might select friends who tell them how cool or attractive or smart they are, and it's a not an amazing strategy for similar reasons.
It's impossible, unless he holds a large portion of the shares of the company. One of the goals of the company is to replace the guy with someone cheaper or find a way to no need him at all.
I've had a few glimpses of what it's like to hate your job and just be there because you need or want the money, and personally, I'm motivated by never wanting to be in that position.
The problem is that finding something isn't optional, so when your dream doesn't work out, it is just a matter of finding what else might accept you.
So many people, when asked about what they want from life, are essentially asking back, "what are my options?"
"On the whole, American workers are generally satisfied with their jobs. Even so, a significant share (30%) view the work they do as “just a job to get them by,” rather than a career or a steppingstone to a career. Views about work are sharply divided along socio-economic lines, and the sense of vulnerability is most acute among workers with no college education and lower-than-average household incomes."
"In addition to job satisfaction, the survey explored what American workers’ jobs mean to them – are their jobs central to who they are, or are they mainly just a source of income? About half (51%) of employed Americans say they get a sense of identity from their job, while the other half (47%) say their job is just what they do for a living. And about half (51%) of all U.S. workers say they view their job as a career, while 18% see it as a steppingstone to a career and 30% say it’s just a job to get them by."
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2016/10/06/3-how-a... (Pew Research: How Americans view their jobs)
Can you live with spending 70% of your life in front of a computer? You can be a dev.
Can you live with your wrong decision costing someone's life? (And all other downsides of being a doctor). I probably couldn't.
Does reading about law bore you out of your mind? If yes, maybe you can't be a lawyer no matter how talented
Personally I find understanding how software and technology works really interesting (I enjoy understanding how 'things' work in general). I also find programming tasks reasonable engaging, if very frustrating at times. They're not my favourite type of problem solving but it's fun. So Software is a reasonably interesting profession and it comes with good money, plenty of opportunity and lot of flexibility.
That said if I had enough money to retire I'd happily leave it and stop programming. My curiosity is largely satisfied and there are other things I'd rather spend my time doing, such as acting, running or studying one of the countless other subjects that interests me. But it's hard to impossible to make a good living doing those things so I keep working as a software engineer and do those things in my spare time. And that's fine. As I say it's moderately interesting and definitely better than most of the alternatives. And I do take pride and interest in my work. But I don't love it and while my career is up there on my priority list it's never going to be top.
I care about the goal, not the means - if the project is gonna save pandas/explore space, I am happy to dig for hours if that's what it takes.
Most startups know this, thats why they are claiming to be 'changing the world', I've seen how that sausage is made, 95% of that is pure marketing BS.
I find most work is just keeping the wheels of society spinning, taxes filed, tickboxes checked. Thats okay, someone has to do that, but not exciting.
I don't hate programming. They money is good. Everything else I could do, would come with a serious slash to my salary. And that's just something else. Jobs that might be interesting require additional years of degrees. It's too late for that.
What remains? It is hard to keep the motivation going. I wish it wouldn't be like this. I want to give 100%, each day. But I can't force myself to care. I tried. Let's see how long I can go on like this.
Once I accepted that after 3-4 hours (well realistically about 6 when you factor in breaks) I'm effectively done for the day my stress levels went way down.
I feel that in this discussion we are conflating being lost and being unmotivated - they could be highly motivated and trying every opportunity, but have no clue what they are doing.
And since (according to you) the educated person was motivated too at one point, there's no guarantee that a 'do-er' will remain motivated. We also know that at one point (s)he wasn't motivated.
Furthermore, how do you even tell who is a "do-er"? How do you know that that person has the capabilities of learning the task? How much are you willing to invest in education vs. "losing" on hiring the educated person?
None of this makes sense, nor is it backed up.
The Doer in his ignorance, will embark on a trip of endlessly trying satisfy his boss, thinking that they are making progress, but they are not.
Everyone knows that it's our (old people) job to say "It can't be done!"
Younger folks are supposed to be "boundary pushers," because they don't know that it can't be done. They keep trying, until they give birth to beautiful unicorns.
Has nothing to do with education, and everything to do with age and [lack of] experience.
Disrupt! FTW!
At least, that's what they tell me, while dissing my experience.
Someone who thrives on novelty will be an uneducated-doer at the start of a project, then convert to an educated-apathetic after completing it. They won't be inspired to do the same thing again because it's not novel. But while it is novel, you can bet they will dedicate a lot of time to it.
Someone who thrives are familiarity will start as an uneducated-apathetic. They will get frozen due to not knowing what to do. But with guidance they can be taught what to do, then will go on to be an educated-doer. These people are happy to keep doing the same projects over and over again. They like what they know.
Most of us fall somewhere in the middle. But I'm sure most of us have worked with both types: the hyper-focused person who works 80 hours a week to get some cool PoC out the door; and the "stick to the process we have in place, please" type. Both are valuable in certain situations, and a liability in others. Carmack and Torvalds appear to be the first kind of person -- granted, I've never met them -- but they do seem to like to build amazing things, then hand them over to someone else to maintain.
I know lots of successful devs who are the latter. They crank out the same kind of code for clients project after project, and will happily work with tools like Wordpress because that's what they know and it makes them money.
If it really is infeasible it’s a win win. Either I figure out how to do something nobody else could have done or I end up giving the next person tasked to take a swing a lot of info about what doesn’t work and maybe they figure it out.
I really like the current HN title.
It has nothing to do with the tweet which I don't understand at all.
The comment the tweet is based on is also really good -
> "Read what you love until you love to read"
It's why we need to get internet porn, shopping, Netflix and video games to the poor. And burn to the ground the idealists who want to get them Wikipedia.
Carmack is a pretty sensible chap. I find his viewpoints to be practical.
It's great to share your personal experience, that's not worthless, but you gotta understand and accept the limitations of that.
Tech is a very thing-oriented and idea-oriented line of work, and motivating others is a people-oriented task. You need to be inclined toward knowing other people and understanding what makes them tick. Then you can show them connection between that and the work you're doing.
There's no reason one person can't be good at all of that, but the field attracts people who are good at the thing-oriented and idea-oriented stuff since that's the main need.
Theory is great, and opens a lot of possibilities. But until you pull out the soldering iron, or the compiler, or the hammer and saw, and make mistakes, you can't really say you know a thing. At best, you know how to start.
The main value of a degree is that basically nobody learn those things properly on the job. So after a few years in industry the person with a degree now knows both theory and practice, while those who just worked only knows the practice and has a glaring lack of theory. And theory is extremely valuable, modern society cannot function without having a lot of people who understands the theory well. Not everyone needs it but some do.
Indeed, doing is learning. :)